A surprising stroke of brilliance.

User Rating: 8.5 | Overlord X360
By Robot-Jesus | Review Date:
Overlord is an Action/Adventure game. A surprisingly good one at that. The game centres around controlling the Overlord and an army of goblin-like minions simultaneously to traverse the 3D gameworld and defeat the heroes who slew the Overlord's predecessor. The controls are pretty simply and easy to use once you get the swing of them. The idea as a whole of using minions or things under your command to do tasks has been done before but not quite as successful as Overlord does it. Basically you have 4 types of minions to command. Browns - The fighters, Reds - The archers, Greens - The assassins and Blues - The Healers. The story starts off with the Overlord having no knowledge of what happened. He awakes to a group of minons, who soon have him suited up and ready for domination. The players task as the Overlord is to rebuild his Dark Tower to it's former glory, and give alittle pay-back to the so called 'Heroes' (whom have all been tainted by the very acheviment that made them heroes) that defeated his predecessor. Each of the former Heroes now represent one of the 7 deadly sins. You have a corruption level. This effects how your Overlord looks, sounds and how people react to you. It also effects what spells you receive.

The gameplay is so simply, yet it really delivers and really keeps you interested. You can select any of the types of minions, or all of them at once. However, you can't choose 2 at once which would of been helpful for some of the encounters. You can 'sweep' your minions by using the Right thumb stick which lets you move them dependently. The minions don't have to have all the fun, you can head into the battle waving you weapon around, smashing creatures into nothing. Now, there are 3 kinds of weapons. Sword - The faster but weakest weapon, Axe - The medium speed and medium damage (ths is the weapon you start out with), and the Mace - The slow but strongest weapon (and my weapon of choice). There 3 kinds of armour, each better than the last. Steel armour (you start with this one), Durium and Arcanium. To make weapons or armour out of any of the metals, you need to find the smelter for it. Once you have forged a piece of Armour or weapon, you can upgrade it, by imbuing it with minions. Each type of minion has a different effect on it. The more of that type of minion you put in, the better effect it has on it, but you do sacrifice your minions so you will lose lifeforce or the type of minion you put in. You can only put so many minions into the equipment until it becomes full. It would be at fair if you were running around with unlimited health. All of this of course costs gold. Now what would any game like this be wthout magic? You have 4 spells which can all be upgraded by finding them. Fire spells - Self-explanatory, Domination spells - These are pretty useless, until you get the evil one. They just stop enemies attacking you (the evil version makes them attack eachother). Sheild spells - Again, self-explanatory and finally, Minion spells - These spells beef up your minions and make them hit harder and take more damage. The ultimate spell of each type that you get depends on your corruption level, if you have low corruption, you get the good version of the spells, if you have a high level of corruption, you get the evil spells.

The graphics as you would expect for a next-gen game are great. Now they aren't Gears of War, but the game isn't trying to look like it, so it isn't that bad if you can see afew choppy edges. The lighting is great. The game even has its own theme which really mixes well with the fell of the game.

Now, the multiplayer. Not really that well thought out, well the survival is alright but the versus is hardly passable. There are two types. Co-op survival, in which you just kick the crap out of whatever the game throws at you with a buddy. The versus mode is pretty rubbish. Unfortunately. But the game isn't really mutiplayer-esque anyway.

The Good - Brilliant gamplay that keeps you enjoying the game the whole way through. Good graphics and soundtrack. Witty comedy.

The Bad - The achievements aren't really that challenging. It could be abit longer.

The Ugly - Multiplayer is not satisfying.

Conclusion - Overlord is a game that combines rich enviroments and vivid graphics and soundtrack with some the best gameplay on the 360. If you want some great fun, buy this game.

Thanks for reading.

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